Integrated VCOs are essential building blocks in phase locked loops, clock recovery circuits, frequency synthesizers, and other circuits used in communication systems. While attempts have been made to fabricate a high frequency VCO on a lossy substrate, such as silicon or silicon germanium, the low quality of inductors used to implement the oscillator tank has limited the phase noise performance of such oscillators. The main cause of low quality in the oscillator tank inductor is the conductive lossy substrate, as a long metal line in a conventional spiral conductor made on the same substrate will be lossy in terms of the power dissipated by the inductor. If the metal line is wide, the capacitive coupling between the metal and the substrate will drain part of the current to the substrate, absorbing a significant portion of the signal power being transmitted across the metal line. On the other hand, if the metal line is made narrow enough to reduce the previous effect to a small level, the overall metal resistance will increase significantly, once more absorbing a significant part of the signal power.